MODCAST

Dr. Alan Flake, the Director of the Center for Fetal Research at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and 2021 March of Dimes Prize recipient, discusses the most impactful pursuits of his career: fetal surgery, the artificial womb, and in utero stem cell therapy.

Dr. Brice Gaudillière, an investigator at the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at Stanford University, discusses a breakthrough Machine Learning (ML) algorithm that makes reliable predictions about labor onset, preterm birth, and preeclampsia and also identifies the biological markers supporting those predictions.  

Dr. Marisa Bartolomei, a University of Pennsylvania professor of cell and developmental biology, co-director of the university's Epigenetics Institute, and winner of the 2024 March of Dimes Richard B. Johnston, Jr., MD Prize, on discovering one of the first imprinted genes, making connections between imprinted gene mutations and developmental disorders, and uncovering the exact pathways of ge...

Former Stanford PRC collaborator Dr. Jonas Miller, now a Psychological Sciences Assistant Professor at the University of Connecticut, discusses how the stress a woman experiences before pregnancy is associated with the way her child's brain functions around three to five years old. Those children, Dr. Miller found, have a harder time with impulse control.

Dr. Tim Hand, a March of Dimes researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, discusses the link between breast milk and a life-threatening preterm birth-related condition called necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). As it turns out, not all breast milk is protective against NEC.

Dr. Elizabeth Cherot, the 6th and current President and CEO of March of Dimes, and the first medical doctor to lead the organization since its founding in 1938, discusses the March of Dimes Innovation Fund.

Dr. Lynne Sykes, a co-director of the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at Imperial College London, discusses the immune cascade that triggers vaginal microbiome-driven preterm birth and a new vaginal supplement that could change the makeup of the vaginal microbiome to prevent this type of immune response.

Philadelphia neonatologists Dr. Jay Greenspan and Dr. Liz Foglia discuss three talks at the upcoming Hot Topics in Neonatology conference in Maryland: one on the lower limits of viability and the other two on racism in the NICU.

Dr. Nima Aghaeepour, a researcher at March of Dimes' Prematurity Research Center at Stanford, discusses a Machine Learning (ML) model that predicts prematurity-related newborn diseases weeks before they occur, including before a baby is even born. 

Prof. MacIntyre, one of the directors of the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at Imperial College London, discusses his team's new device that can, in under two minutes, identify the type of bacteria in a woman's vaginal microbiome and determine whether it's causing inflammation, and could lead to preterm birth. 

Stanford University Science Fellow Dr. Mira Moufarrej on what we know about preeclampsia, why Black women in the U.S. are disproportionately impacted and a new blood test that could identify at-risk women in the first trimester. 

Dr. Marina Sirota, principal investigator at the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at the University of California San Francisco, and colleagues Dr. Tomiko Oskotsky and Dr. Jonathan Golob discuss using big data to launch a DREAM Challenge that succeeded in creating two predictive models for preterm birth risk.

March of Dimes Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Emre Seli discusses the motivations behind the podcast, the research vision at March of Dimes, our belief in open, collaborative science, and our focus on translational research that makes a difference for moms and babies.